Direct Mail
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- DavidNewton
So I'm designing a promotional piece of direct mail, which will be printed digitally and the design will incorporate each recipients name and address on it (personalised, basically).
Just need to know if theres anything I cant do? Like can I use white out text, what size the type has to be, does it need an exclusion zone around the address etc?
If anyone has experience doing this and can help me out that would be appreciated!
- grunttt0
talk to the printer.
- billl0
variable data... like gruntt said, talk to the printer
- trooper0
lol im doing the exact same thing here.. the printer has said to me just supply text in MS Word and data in excel.
- DavidNewton0
No i mean from royal mails point of view, do they stipulate addresses must a certain size or position on the page? Sorry I didnt make that clear
- harlequino0
Not sure about the UK, but decent direct mail printers should also know the ins and outs of postal requirements. In the US, there's some pretty stringent guidelines.
- FallowDeer0
im shocked your even in work newton!
- Im here in body but not in mind! Still a bit pissed and my voice has gone! hahaDavidNewton
- DavidNewton0
haha, theres the ironic part, were only doing a small run of 500 and were doing them with a real cheap printer, this is the first time the printer has done it so they dont have a clue either, cause its a self promotional piece for the company i work for, were letting the printers use our job as a bit of a guinea pig and in return we get it cheap!
- Gucci0
You can pretty much put the text wherever you want and have it at any size. If your client is footing the bill for digital variable data, you should coordinate with the printer like others have said to make sure the job goes smoothly.
The size and style of text is totally up to you (as far as my experience goes) but colour has been an issue for me because i've had to print stuff offset which has certain limitations.
- thanks for the help, ill pester the printer and make it clear that they should be leading me on this one and not the other way round!DavidNewton
- trooper0
whats the price? ours is costing: £250 plus £10 mail merge and £1 ea if we want them creased too..
- weave0
In terms of addressing an envelope royal mail do have a set of specifications you are supposed to adhere to. That said you can handwrite an address and it gets posted.
It's mainly so the sorting machine can read the address and mainly for prepaid envelopes. Go with something clear and simple. Helvetica, Arial 10-12pt that sort of thing and you should be fine. Reversing text out may cause problems but according to our postman all the stuff the machine can't read gets sorted by hand so it's not going to get rejected.
The website is hopeless, I had hours of fun trying to download a business prepaid envelope template, they have tons of different names for the same thing. Calling up helped a bit but also took forever to get through.
- DavidNewton0
Not sure to be honest, im only the monkey not the organ grinder! I can try and find out for you though!